The Smile of a Ghost

Tomorrow morning, the body of her first child would be taken to Shrewsbury for the post-mortem. Tonight, outside the hospital, Ange shelved her grief and set about doing what Mumford reckoned she’d been doing since before she could walk, which was generously apportioning the blame so that there was none of it left for her.

‘That selfish ole bitch, I just hope she’s satisfied. I gotter come all this way to see my son lying dead, killed, because she wasn’t fit to look after him. She robbed me… robbed me of my son. I hope she’s fuckin’ satisfied now.’

Ange in the car park, legs apart, arms folded and a sawn-off top advertising her navel and her condition. Thirty-nine years old.

‘I reckon you better get off home, Angela,’ Mumford said. ‘I’ll phone for a taxi.’

‘Happier yere than he ever was with you? You remember when she come out with that one? What did you say? Nothing, as usual.’

‘She’s not right,’ Mumford said quietly. ‘You know that.’

Except on that occasion, Mam had been dead right. Mumford drew away from the alcohol fumes, stumbling back into a tree trunk as his sister stuck her wet, smudgy face up to his.

‘She en’t fit to look after a child, that’s for sure. And you never said a word, so I hope you’re satisfied too, mister smart-arse fuckin’ detective.’

‘He en’t a detective no more.’

Knowing smirk from Lennox Mathiesson, ten years younger than Angela, two convictions for burglary, one aggravated, plus an ABH. Well, Mam’s mind might be on the blink but she could still recognize a bad bastard when she saw one, and that was why her and Ange hadn’t spoke for the best part of two years, since Ange had left Robbie’s dad — decent enough bloke, worked at Burton’s men’s-shop — for Mathiesson.

Mumford got out his mobile, putting in the number of this taxi firm he knew in Leominster. It’d cost, but he just wanted an end to this night.

‘Oh yeah, get me out.’ Ange staring at him with contempt. ‘Get me out, ’fore I makes trouble. Well, we’re gonner make trouble, mister, you count on it. We can sue that castle, for a start.’ Hands on her hips now, body arched, belly swelling out. ‘Letting him run wild all day in dangerous ole ruins that oughter be fuckin’ pulled down.’

Run wild? Robbie? Mumford was thinking of all the times he’d heard her say, I wonder sometimes where he came from, hiding away with his books, no proper friends. It’s not like having a normal child, is it?

‘Angela,’ he said, ‘obviously you’re terrible upset, but let’s just get one thing straight: there’s no case to sue the castle. Robbie was there illegally, when it was closed for the night.’

‘Well, we’ll fuckin’ see about that, won’t we, mister smart-arse fuckin’ ex- detective.’

Mumford nodded, standing with his heels in a flower bed, taking it. What else could he do?

‘And what’s disgusting, like I say, is she never knew where he was. I bet she even forgot he was stayin’ yere.’

Laughable, that, coming from Ange. It had always been Mumford himself who’d picked Robbie up and brought him over to Ludlow for his holidays, and his most sorrowful image of the boy was not the lolling body under the tower but the pale kid with a suitcase waiting like an orphan at the top of the steps at the Plascarreg.

Different boy altogether when he got to Ludlow, but Ange was never going to want reminding of that.

He got the taxi firm on the mobile. ‘Soon’s you can, Paul, eh?’

‘And I’ll tell you what, mister — you can tell the ole bitch she can pay for the fuckin’ funeral…’

‘God almighty, Angela!’

It had been like this for as long as he could remember. Mam had been forty-five when she’d had Ange, and the gap was always too wide — Mumford always in the middle, covering his ears.

‘Wasn’t fit to look after nothin’, and you never seen it, or you pretended not to, more like, ’cause you was always too busy persecuting folks just wanted a bit of pleasure outer life.’

Meaning the time he and Bliss had had Mathiesson’s brother for enough crack to lay out half the estate. Personal use. The balls they expected you to swallow. Mumford had never set foot in Ange’s flat from that day to this.

‘You bloody let her take him away from his own mother just when I needed the help. You robbed me, she robbed me, every—’

Ange had started to cry again then, tottering across to Lennox Mathiesson, who gathered her into his tattooed arms, giving Mumford this thin smile over her quaking shoulders.

Time he was off. Needed to pick Gail up from poor bloody Mam’s. Gail in her best frock for the celebration dinner. Christ.

‘Anyway, you know where I am,’ Mumford said and walked away, Angela screaming at his back.

‘You tell her I hope she never sleeps again!’

All the lights were on in his mam and dad’s house, the last neighbour walking away. They were good to her, the neighbours in this short, terraced row down at the bottom of the town, between the station and the new Tesco’s.

Mumford sat in his car and just wanted to stay there. He could see Gail and his dad through the extended front window, its curtains still drawn back. His dad had a hand on his forehead, likely with exasperation by now; his dad had never had much patience with female emotions. Gail had a cardigan over her new frock, and she was bending down, like she was bending over a sickbed. Below the level of the window frame, his mam would be sitting in her chair and the TV would be on with the sound turned down.

He could feel the atmosphere in that room coming out at him like radio static.

Gail was a nurse and knew how to handle people in grief; all Mumford knew was how to catch the people who’d caused it. Which didn’t apply in this case, whatever Ange said, and, even if it had, he wasn’t allowed to do anything no more.

Unless Ange was halfway right, and he was the guilty party.

He leaned his sweating forehead against the back of his hands on top of the steering wheel and let the breath come out of him. Feeling beyond exhaustion.

Aye, he’d known the state she was in, the ole girl, but he’d also known how much it had meant to her having Robbie around. Didn’t know much about degenerative brain disease but he did know his mam would have gone downhill a whole lot faster without the boy.

When he looked up, he saw how pale the night sky was, the big tower of St Laurence’s looming out of the body of the town. And became aware of another person standing out on the edge of the Tesco’s car park, still as a post, looking across the road at the house.

A woman, it was, with pale hair escaping from the hood of a long grey cape that hung to the ground. The night was so still that the cape didn’t move, its folds like the stone pleats of the robe of some religious statue. The only movement was a white flickering like a candle on an altar. And it was a candle, Mumford saw, in a metal lantern that hung from the woman’s hand emerging from a slit in the cape.

Mumford experienced a moment of superstitious fear — like he was seeing the angel of death outside the house — and then a bigger fear that he, like the ole girl, was losing his marbles, and he got out of the car in a near-panic.

As he reached the edge of the car park, the woman turned to face him, and there was enough light for him to see that she was entirely human and that she’d been crying.

‘You all right, madam?’ Mumford said.

She didn’t reply, just walked away with the candle-lantern swinging like a captured star in a cage, and Mumford shook his head and crossed the road to his parents’ house.

PART ONE Robbie